I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be able to find an interviewee and I wasn’t sure how relevant my interview would eventually be to the general project, but I actually found the process of finding a person much easier than I expected. Jose was someone who has been doing Community organizing work for almost a decade and whose experiences was the kind of thing that should be heard and recorded for future students and activists. I encountered the challenge of circumstances beyond the class room. The struggle for Palestine asserted itself with the Encampment movement and the subsequent state violence that was brought upon the peaceful protest on our campus. This was a very disturbing thing to go through and witness on our campus and affected not just me but so many students at UCSD.
One specific moment I had working with my community partner that I found really interesting was finding lost histories in the Mecha archives. There were so many conversations and activities that the group was engaged in throughout the years and seeing their notes on those conversations gave me a snap shot into that time and place.
One thing I found really interesting from my conversation with my narrator was what brought them to Socialist politics. The immense police repression that the US had brought upon the peaceful protesters, who’s only crime was standing up against the murdering of an unarmed black man in El Cajon by the police, and the general experience of that movement brought him to Socialist politics. He described it like how carbon under pressure transforms into certain kinds of minerals. The experience in the struggle turned them into a Socialist, not reading theory but the participation in the mass movement and facing the violence of the state made them into a socialist.
